InterGlobix Magazine Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Jasmine Bedi, spoke to Ivo Ivanov about his strategic vision and the way forward for the future of DE-CIX and the Internet. Through the lens of peering and interconnection, he offers insight into how DE-CIX is building AI- and future-ready infrastructure to enable seamless multi-agent inference for today’s complex use cases and tomorrow’s innovation in all industry segments.
As DE-CIX celebrates its 30th birthday, it’s natural to reflect both on where the company has been and where it’s going next. Since the rest of this feature story explores DE-CIX’s foundation in more depth, can you tell us more about the latter and what you see driving DE-CIX’s future?
The future direction of DE-CIX is a natural continuation of the organization’s historical development. As the global leader in peering services, peering will remain at the heart of the company’s ongoing strategy. Whether referred to as Internet Exchanges (IXs), Cloud Exchanges, or AI Exchanges (AI-IX), DE-CIX platforms all serve one essential purpose: enabling direct interconnection between networks. This form of connectivity is foundational to digital progress—whether in video consumption, live sports streaming, online gaming, e-commerce, productivity in the cloud, financial transactions, intelligent manufacturing, or the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous robotics. Peering underpins virtually every digital process today and will become even more critical in the years to come.
Looking ahead to the coming years, DE-CIX will continue to be driven by peering—but the concept of peering itself is evolving. Just as cloud connectivity once reshaped peering practices, future developments will bring forth new and diverse models of interconnection suited to the requirements of the next-generation Internet. DE-CIX already plays a key role in the infrastructure strategies of both wholesale carriers and enterprise organizations. Going forward, the focus will be on expanding the scope and adaptability of peering to support a wide range of customer needs, thereby ensuring services remain efficient, secure, resilient, and high-performing across varied applications.
What are some examples you’re seeing of how peering approaches are changing to continue meeting the needs of your diverse customers?
A particularly relevant example is the Closed User Group (CUG) model. This concept allows enterprises to create dedicated peering environments tailored to specific requirements, whether in sectors like automotive, finance, healthcare, or manufacturing. CUGs meet growing market demands for customizable, high-performance, and secure interconnection solutions with both regional and global scope. These private ecosystems enable organizations to exchange data internally and/or with selected partners in a protected space. Furthermore, CUGs can act as private cloud exchanges, including features like the DE-CIX Cloud ROUTER for managing multi-cloud environments. Hybrid configurations are also possible, combining connectivity to industry partners and cloud providers to support complex value chains.
Another emerging use case involves AI inference peering across an AI Exchange. In September of this year (2025), we launched our AI Internet Exchange (AI-IX) to ensure seamless interconnection between intelligent agents, next-generation networks like 5G Advanced and low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, and real-world applications like robotics and self-driving vehicles. These three elements—the millions of emerging agents, AI-powered devices and applications, and modern transmission technologies—must be interwoven in a reliable, secure, and extremely high-performance manner using direct interconnection, otherwise known as peering.
When considering both existing use cases and emerging ones, what does the expansion in peering scope and adaptability look like in practice?
DE-CIX provides interconnection solutions for all types of network operators, ranging from carriers and ISPs to content delivery networks, cloud providers, and enterprises. The strategic focus remains on delivering excellence in both technology and services, which allows customers to benefit from tailored configurations and a high degree of automation. This new era of peering is defined by a range of advantages: pricing flexibility, operational automation, robust security, service monitoring, localized proximity, comprehensive support for niche players, industry-standard compliance, customized solutions, enterprise-grade performance, and ease of business integration.
As connectivity demands grow increasingly complex, infrastructure stakeholders—from long-standing wholesale operators to newcomers in the enterprise segment—will require new models of engagement. Network operations are becoming more globally distributed, yet application and service performance must be optimized for ultra-low latency, which necessitates infrastructure deployment closer to end users at the deep edge. In response, DE-CIX’s ongoing strategy includes the seamless integration of local, regional, and global interconnection through a continually expanding platform, ecosystem, and global backbone. This approach allows customers to build customized private ecosystems, which in turn enables complete control over the end-to-end data journey—delivered through fully automated processes. As digital services continue to evolve, flexible and easily accessible infrastructure will be essential to support the needs of users, businesses, and institutions alike.
You’ve already touched on how AI is impacting both your approach to peering and generally impacting the digital infrastructure industry. Can you tell us more about what you see as the driving factors of AI use and applications moving forward—and what that means for building AI-ready infrastructure?
The future importance of robust interconnection is especially apparent in the context of AI. Much attention has been given to the hardware and data center expansions driven by AI’s rapid growth. While immense computing capacity is indeed required—particularly for training large AI models—this need is typically short-lived and isolated to specific development phases. For ongoing AI inference, which I forecast will represent the majority of AI workloads moving forward, high-performance connectivity is the primary requirement.
The development of autonomous humanoid robots serves as a striking example of this trend. Such systems rely on two AI functions: training and inference. While training is computationally intensive, inference must be constant, fast, and reliable—and that’s where infrastructure plays a vital role. More broadly, this example reflects a widespread phenomenon, which I call “digital everywhere.” This phenomenon encompasses innovations like autonomous vehicles, intelligent production lines, precision agriculture, smart logistics, and AI-driven healthcare. Emerging transmission technologies—such as 5G Advanced, 6G, and LEO satellite networks—are complementing fiber infrastructure to extend connectivity to the deep edge.
Technologies including AI, IoT, immersive media, and augmented / virtual reality all demand ultra-low latency to function in ways that align with human perception. The next wave of digital devices and applications will increasingly mimic human sensory and cognitive processes. To interact naturally and safely with people and their surroundings, these technologies must integrate multiple AI functions—ranging from movement and language processing to perception and real-time learning—within latency thresholds comparable to those of the human brain. These smart, real-time systems present new challenges for digital infrastructure, as they require a fundamentally new generation of interconnection models. As a result, traditional Internet architecture must evolve to accommodate the needs of these advanced applications. And DE-CIX will work to make its contribution in paving the way for a next-generation Internet capable of meeting the demands of a truly intelligent digital future.
ABOUT IVO IVANOV
Ivo Ivanov is Chief Executive Officer of DE-CIX and Chairman of the Board of the DE-CIX Group AG. Prior to these positions, Ivanov was Chief Operating Officer of DE-CIX and Chief Executive Officer of DE-CIX International, where he was responsible for the global business activities of the world’s leading Internet Exchange operator. Ivanov has more than 20 years of experience in the regulatory, legal, and commercial Internet environment.
Having joined DE-CIX in 2007, he has in recent years been deeply involved in the establishment of DE-CIX sites in North and South America, Southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, as well as several DE-CIX consultancy projects in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
